


Both Of Us (Should Know Better)

by doctormccoy



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Basically Clint keeps getting injured and attractive neighbor slash Doctor McCoy patches him up, Clint Barton POV, Commission fic, Deaf Clint Barton, Get Together, Hospitals, Kissing, M/M, Minor descriptions of violence and injury, Pining, TOS!McCoy, Takes place in the Marvel Universe, Vigilantism, crossover fic, happy endings, loosely based on the Matt Fraction comics, nothing too graphic, pls forgive me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctormccoy/pseuds/doctormccoy
Summary: Clint Barton isn't a super hero. He doesn't have magic powers, or super speed. Not even a cool spandex outfit to parade around New York City in. No, all he has is a strong desire to do some good in this world and a cranky neighbor named Leonard who is willing to stitch him back together when he takes his lumps.Well, mostly willing.





	Both Of Us (Should Know Better)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chewingonpearls (Reallife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reallife/gifts).



> "Are we too grown for changin'?  
> Are we too grown to mess around?  
> Oh and I can't wait forever baby,  
> Both of us should know better."
> 
> Title and quote from ["What Lovers Do" by Maroon 5.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NmGGGlHpxQ)
> 
> Commissioned by [bagofgroceries](http://bagofgroceries.tumblr.com/). I had a lot of fun writing this? It was so original and out of the box, and it was enjoyable writing my favorite hawk son and space son snarking and angsting at one another.
> 
> In case it isn't clear, the italics are when Clint and McCoy are speaking in sign language.

“Damn it, Barton, I’m a Doctor not a miracle worker,” McCoy snaps, more for his own benefit than for his stubborn, bleeding neighbor’s, currently sprawled across his living room couch. Clint gives him a sheepish look, wincing as the stitching pulls taut across the deep gash in his forearm. He taps the left side hearing aid and flinches when it gives a staticky squawk in response before the world suddenly goes silent. Definitely broken, just like the rest of him. 

“I couldn’t just let them mug her, Doc, you know that,” he complains, lips pursed in a poor imitation of a pout as McCoy slowly pieces him back together. Clint doesn’t realize he’s missed a response until Leonard nudges his elbow, a question in his eyes when Clint looks up. 

_You busted your hearing aids again,_ McCoy signs, and his skilled surgeon’s hands always manage to make the movements look so much more elegant than anyone else can. Clint doesn’t need his hearing to tell that it’s definitely a statement, not a question, and he shrugs it off, hoping he’ll get off with a light scolding this time. 

Leonard cuffing him upside the head says “definitely not” well enough, but the anger in the gesture is somewhat lessened by the gentleness of the hands removing the hearing aids from around his ears. 

_I’ll take a look at them, see if it’s something I can fix,_ McCoy tells him absently, setting the lilac colored aids aside and focusing his attention back on the delicate stitchwork. Clint lets him work in silence for awhile, watching him with quiet intent. It’s always a delight getting to watch Len in his element, focused on the task of healing with a laser precision most could only envy. Now if only Clint could enjoy seeing the Doctor work without it being on _him._ Well, it’s a work in progress. 

The cranky, rough around the edges man had moved into the apartment across from Clint’s almost a year ago, doing his damndest to not make a single friend in the entire building. Sure, he’s nice enough, always holds the door open, helps the little old ladies carry in their groceries, but McCoy has this habit of always keeping people at arm’s length.

Clint had been totally okay with letting him have that, too, until McCoy had come across his unconscious body, sprawled across the open doorway to Clint’s apartment and generally making a bloody nuisance of himself, no pun intended. 

He saved Clint’s life and, clearly much to his utter regret, ended up with a new friend. One that came around at least once a week with some new cut or scrape or, occasionally, a broken bone. The kind of thing that usually ended a normal friendship but, then, neither of them were really all that normal. 

Leonard has finished stitching up his arm and his deft, sturdy hands are now winding a clean white bandage around it. Clint loves those hands. He daydreams about how nice they would feel on his skin when he wasn’t in agonizing pain. 

Not that McCoy would ever want to do that, considering the general put togetherness of his life and career and the not so general chaotic insanity of Clint’s, but still it kept him company in the long dark hours of the night. 

“All done,” McCoy says, looking up to make sure Clint can see his mouth to read his lips. “Next time maybe consider just calling the cops like everyone else on this damn planet who doesn’t wear spandex and shoot laser beams out of their eyes.”

He gives Clint a withering stare, the kind that makes Clint’s belly do flip flops. The kind that lets him know McCoy isn’t solely in this for the good samaritan points. 

“You know I can’t just sit by and watch people get hurt, Len. Not when there’s something I can do about it,” Clint grumps, accepting the painkillers and glass of water McCoy offers him. He always complains that he should just make Clint suffer and maybe he’ll learn a lesson, but he never does. 

The Doctor heaves a silent sigh and leans back on his stool, running a hand through his neatly parted hair. 

_No, I don’t suppose you can, huh?_ he finally concedes. _Just be more careful, Barton, or next time you’ll need a coroner, not a doctor. You can’t help people if you’re dead._

Clint can’t help but smirk at him, waggling a suggestive eyebrow. 

_I didn’t know you cared so much, Len,_ he teases, flapping a hand playfully in his direction. McCoy rolls his eyes and stands, peeling his rubber gloves off and dropping them onto the pile of blood soaked gauze on his coffee table. 

_I don’t care. In fact, next time you’ve gone and gotten yourself beaten to a pulp, find someone else’s couch to bleed all over,_ McCoy snaps, tossing Clint’s shirt at his face to silence his laughter. 

Clint stands up and carefully tugs his torn, bloodstained t-shirt gingerly over his head, watching as McCoy busies himself with cleaning up.

“Thanks, Doc. I mean it. I don’t know where I’d be without you,” he says out loud, chest clenching when McCoy turns to look at him with that unfathomable expression of his. Somewhere between longing and sadness, settling deep into the frown lines at the corners of his mouth and the crow’s feet around his eyes. Clint could spend hours just cataloging the range and depth of feeling in McCoy’s face, if McCoy would let him. 

“Six feet under, that’s where,” Leonard spits, though Clint can tell even without being able to hear the tone that there’s no real poison in the words, just a heavy tiredness. “I’ll take a gander at your hearing aids and if I can fix them I’ll drop them by later. 

Leonard turns away and Clint can’t read his lips at this angle but he’s pretty sure he can guess McCoy’s next words were something along the line of “I’m a Doctor, damn it, not a repair man.” 

He’s predictable like that. 

Clint leaves him to grumble for the opportunity to grab some sleep while the painkillers took the edge off the throb in his arm… and back… basically everywhere, really. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t feel like one giant bruise. 

When McCoy enters his apartment to drop off his hearing aids (Clint had wisely given him a spare key ages ago, once it was clear he couldn’t be trusted to just ask for help when he needed it) he doesn’t wake up, fast asleep on the couch in the living room. He doesn’t hear the sad sigh that escapes his friend, or feel the blanket that McCoy drapes over him to stave off the evening chill. 

The next morning though, as Clint gingerly stretches out sore, aching muscles, he swears, just for a moment, that he remembers the fleeting brush of lips against his forehead. 

Probably just a dream. 

The rest of the week goes by like predictable clockwork. Clint does something reckless and stupid, saves a life or two, Leonard patches him up with a rough voice and a gentle touch. Rinse and repeat, day in, day out. A week turns into a month. And then two. 

Kate drops by for a couple days in the middle of the monotony, her liquid brown eyes filled with sadness as he struggles around the kitchen with a heavily splinted ankle. 

“You’re going to kill yourself if you keep this up, Clint,” she sighs, and it’s less a warning and more a statement of fact. 

Clint shrugs at her, pouring himself a mug of yesterday’s leftover coffee, now long since past tasting decent. 

“At least if I die saving people my life will be worth something, won’t it?” he replies without looking at her. He can’t stand the sympathy he knows is etched into the premature worry lines around her mouth. Her hand is heavy on his shoulder, fingers digging into day old bruises. 

“Then maybe it’s time to find something worth living for, Clint.” 

Kate leaves not long after that and Clint goes back to doing what he does best: getting the shit kicked out of him. 

He puts her words behind him, pushes them to the outer reaches of his memory. More weeks go by, more fights, more broken ribs and deep tissue bruising. McCoy doesn’t bother with the lectures anymore, he just patches Clint’s wounds, sews up his hurts, and sends him on his way. 

Until one day Leonard doesn’t answer his door. 

That in itself isn’t terribly unremarkable. Leonard does have a job, despite his utter lack of a social life, and it’s why Clint has a key now. He lets himself in and rummages around in the first aid kit the Doctor always keeps in the sitting area, digging out the disinfectant and bandages. 

Careful not to bleed on the couch, he cleans the deep knife wound on his forearm and wraps it with clean bandages, knowing better than to make a messy attempt at stitching himself up. The back of his head still remembers the smart of the punishing slap Leonard had given him the first and only time he tried. 

He takes some painkillers and passes out on the soft carpet, not blinking awake again until it’s well into the evening. Arguably closer to morning at this point, judging from the weak sunlight starting to peek through the windows. 

Leonard never came home last night and that… _that_ is something to take note of. 

Still groggy from the medication, Clint hauls himself to his feet and makes clumsy progress towards the landline he remembers is in the kitchen, groping along the wall in the dark until he finds it. The first speed dial is Leonard’s personal line at the hospital and Clint is thankful that his hearing aids are still fully functional after this latest foray into vigilantism. 

It rings and rings before going to machine, Leonard’s crisp Doctor Voice asking him to leave a message at the tone, or to hang up and dial 911 if it’s an emergency. He ends the call before the machine starts recording. 

Maybe Leonard has found a…. “Special friend” to spend the night with? Clint dismisses this immediately as ludicrous, though less because he finds it unbelievable and more so because he does not want to acknowledge it as a possibility. He hits the number to call Leonard’s office again and this time someone picks up on the second ring. 

“Doc, where on earth have you been?” he demands before Leonard can speak, drumming his fingers impatiently on the wall while silence echoes on the other side of the phone for a tense moment. 

“I’m sorry, are you a patient of Doctor McCoy’s?” comes the painfully polite voice of Leonard’s secretary, a woman Clint vaguely recalls is named… Janine? Janet? Janice. 

“No, no, it’s.. It’s me, it’s Clint. Len’s.. Neighbor,” he supplies lamely, not sure if he’s earned the right to call himself McCoy’s friend. Certainly not lately. “Where is Doctor McCoy? He never came home last night.”

Janice clears her throat uncomfortably, a hollow click of distress echoing through the phone. 

“There was a patient who came in last night sporting multiple gunshot wounds. A gun runner for one of the local gangs. Doctor McCoy was working on him when a rival gang busted in and shot the operating room up,” she tells him softly, regretfully, and Clint is suddenly acutely aware of how hard it is to breathe. 

“He’s alive, for the moment. His patient was killed, and one of the other surgeons assisting in the operation, but.. It doesn’t look good. We’ve been trying to get in contact with you all night, Mister Barton.” 

The world narrows back down for a moment as Clint tries to catch his breath, chest tight and aching. 

“Me? Why me?” he asks dumbly, leaning heavily against the wall. 

“You’re listed as Doctor McCoy’s next of kin,” she tells him simply, gently, as if she expects him to break down any moment now. “I’d recommend coming as soon as you can, there’s.. Not much we can do except make him comfortable and hope for the best.” 

He hangs up the phone and sinks slowly down the wall until he’s sitting on the cold plastic tile, his head filled with an incomprehensible roaring. At some point he gets up and returns to his own apartment to change out of his bloody clothes and find his shoes. There _must_ be some passage of time between then and when he arrives at the hospital in the yellow cab.

Clint remembers none of it, as if the universe blinked and he suddenly appears at Leonard’s side, shivering in a way that has nothing to do with the icy chill of the hospital. 

Leonard is pale and hooked up to so many machines that beep and flash without doing any good. There’s a thick swath of bandages around his chest, the pristine whiteness almost painfully bright. He takes in what the Doctor beside him says without really hearing any of it, staring numbly at the peaceful face of his neighbor.

His friend. 

The bullets have all been removed and the internal bleeding stymied. McCoy died on the operating table three separate times, and when he wakes up he may never be the same. At this point it’s a waiting game to see _if_ he wakes up at all. 

Clint refuses to wrap his head around the words “possible brain damage” and “potentially permanent coma”. Perhaps if he doesn’t acknowledge them then they aren’t real. 

And if they aren’t real then they can’t take Leonard away from him. 

Up until this moment Clint’s life has always revolved around when the next alleyway brawl would be. The next mugger he can stop, the next attempted carjacking, the next bank robber, on and on and on. 

Now he starts and ends his days at the hospital, sitting motionless by Leonard’s bedside and pondering the boundaries of a world in which he is important enough to Leonard to be his next of kin. His _only_ next of kin. The person he trusts most in this world. 

“You got shot protecting your nurses from the gunmen,” Clint tells the sleeping man in front of him. As has been the case for the last twelve days, Leonard does not respond. Not that Clint expects him to at this point. 

“You tried to save your patient too, even as you were bleeding to death. You idiot. You should have run when you had the chance.”

His voice cracks and he falls silent, looking down at his lap. He barely registers the heat in his face or the blurriness of his vision. Nothing compares to the giant, sucking wound in his chest that is Leonard’s absence in his life. 

“I understand why you always yelled at me when I got hurt, now. Did it always feel like this for you, too? Seeing me stumble into your living room, all chewed to hell and bleeding out like I didn’t even care if I died?” 

Clint scrubs his sleeve across his face and allows himself to wallow in the depths of his own self pity. 

“I’m sorry, Len. For whatever the fuck it’s worth, I’m sorry. And I swear to whatever God or deity or, or… or freaky space alien that cares enough to listen that I’ll never be so reckless with my own life ever again if you just wake up, Len. Please. I don’t.. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you.” 

But life isn’t a Disney movie, and there is no God who cares about Clint Barton, so Leonard stays sleeping, peaceful and silent as always. 

Clint goes home and takes one look at his empty apartment before he starts throwing things, smashing glass and splintering wood. He rips his hearing aids out and crunches them into tiny broken pieces and in the end he only feels worse.

The ringing in his ears doesn’t go away even as the world falls completely silent around him. He falls into a dreamless sleep with bloody knuckles amongst the wreckage of his helpless anger. 

The phone rings unnoticed during the night. More than once; someone’s eager or perhaps just desperate attempts to contact him. He misses another call the next morning as he rinses off the shards of glass and broken tile that cling to his hair and skin. Clint tells his reflection that it’s so McCoy won’t be alarmed to see him like that when he wakes up today. 

It sounds hollow even to his own unhearing ears. 

He has to mime to the taxi driver that he’s deaf, not rude, when the disgruntled man drops him off at the hospital, and ain’t that a great start to another shit day. 

It’s with the resignation of the damned that Clint makes his way across the front garden and into the lobby, eyes down and hands shoved deep into his pockets. Easier to avoid human contact this way. 

That’s how he misses Leonard’s assistant Janice calling his name from the other side of the lobby, and the nurse trying to get his attention from behind the glass of her patient check in cubicle. People who have come to recognize him and care for him as someone who matters to Leonard. 

And this is why Clint has absolutely no warning for when he walks into Leonard’s hospital room to see an empty bed, already turned up and ready for another patient. 

He stumbles against the doorway, clutching at the wood with bruised and aching fingers. His throat closes and his lungs seize up, the cup of cold coffee he’d choked down before leaving threatening to make a reappearance. Every nerve ending seems frozen and on fire all at once. 

Clint cannot comprehend a world in which Leonard McCoy no longer exists. He _will not._

There are hands clutching at his shoulders now, pulling and shaking him as he lets out a soundless wail of grief. Soundless to his own ears, at any rate. 

Suddenly, without warning, there is a bare foot planted in the small of his back and he has only a split second to catalog this before he’s kicked flat on his face beside the empty hospital bed. Clint lets himself lay there for several long moments, forehead aching where it hit the hard tile and chest tight. The foot kicks him in the ass again, bringing him back to the present. 

He slowly sits up and wipes his now bloody nose on his sleeve, twisting to get a look at whoever had the nerve to kick a man while he’s down, both literally and figuratively. 

Familiar blue eyes and an even more familiar scowl greet him, Leonard’s arms carefully crossed across his thin, bandaged chest, sitting in a hospital issued wheelchair.

“Why the hell are you makin’ so much racket? Don’t you know this is a hospital? There are sick people tryin’ to sleep here, you idiot,” he complains, though Clint can’t hear the words or comprehend the movements of his lips. 

He just sits there and stares slack jawed, bloody nose completely forgotten. 

“I thought you were dead,” he finally says, easing himself across the space between them on hands and knees. Janice appears in a flustered huff behind McCoy and the bewildered nurse who had been bringing him back from his check up with the surgeon. 

“We’ve been trying to call him since last night but no one was answering,” she explains, panting softly. “He had no idea you woke up.” 

Clint misses this too, eyes fixed on Leonard’s face, disbelief etched in every wary outline of his tense posture. McCoy softens around the edges at this revelation, uncrossing his arms and settling them on his lap instead.

 _I woke up last night. They changed my bedding while I was visiting with the surgeon so he could check over my neurological status,_ Leonard signs, noticing the distinct lack of lilac hearing aids in Clint’s ears. _They tried calling you._

Wincing, Clint raises a hand to rub at the red spot forming on his forehead. 

“I may have… broken them. Last night. I was angry at the world and I just.” 

He flaps fingers helplessly, grunting when Leonard’s hands shoot out to grab at the digits, sharp blue eyes peering at the fresh, deep bruises. 

_I see,_ he replies stiffly, rolling his eyes at the sheepish look Clint offers him. 

“I didn’t get into a fight, unless you count my kitchen table as the bad guy, that is,” he complains, shrugging a shoulder as McCoy barks at Janice and the nurse behind him, presumably ordering them to go get bandages and antiseptic to clean Clint’s injuries. 

McCoy wheels himself further into the room and shuts the door behind them, still managing to cut an imposing figure despite the frailty in his frame that his injuries have caused. Clint stays on his knees in front of the wheelchair, probably for the best considering he’s not quite sure he can stand on his own steam quite yet. 

“I thought I was gonna lose you. All the fighting seemed.. Meaningless at that point,” Clint admits out loud, his bruised and aching fingers too stiff for coherent signing. 

McCoy cocks his head to the side and studies him for a hot second, eyes narrow and considering. 

_So, what? You almost lose your Doctor and you just give up on life? I didn’t take you for a quitter, Barton,_ Leonard signs in reply and Clint can feel the frosty disappointment laced in those words. 

He shrugs, gnawing on his lower lip. 

“I just didn’t see much point in saving the world if you weren’t in it.”

He sees the sharp intake in McCoy’s breath, pupils dilating until they were black pinpricks in the midst of a deep blue sea. Clint looks down and away, ashamed of the confession. This is where Leonard will rebuke him. Laugh in his face. 

Clint isn’t worthy of love in any form, especially not Leonard’s. All this time he’s been struggling to prove himself wrong, to show the world that he could become someone who can earn the right to be cared for. 

Gentle hands cradle his cheeks and force him to look up, to meet Leonard’s watery blue gaze and suddenly his face is so very, very close. 

“You’re a god damned fool,” Leonard sighs, and this time Clint is focused enough to make out the words his lips shape around. “I guess that makes me a bigger fool for loving you.” 

There isn’t any time for Clint to wrap his head around any of this before Leonard seals their mouths together. It’s a horrible first kiss, as far as first kisses go. Leonard’s lips are chapped with thirst after being asleep for almost two weeks and Clint’s too stunned to do much more than clutch at his hospital gown and go along for the ride, tasting his own blood and tears and not giving a single shit. 

He’s grinning like a loon when McCoy finally breaks it off, breathless and weak kneed and relentlessly grateful he’s already on the floor. 

“Now, Doc. You go sayin’ stuff like that and people might start to think you have a heart under that grumpy outer crust,” he teases, using his sleeve to clean the blood off Leonard’s upper lip. Leonard’s laugh is cut short by the lancing pain in his chest and Clint gives him a moment to catch his breath, fingers still buried in his short cropped hair, before he leans in to steal a softer kiss, gentler but no less passionate. 

“Don’t you ever go doin’ something that stupid and brave ever again, Len. Y’hear me?” Clint grumbles, pressing his sore forehead to McCoy’s to drink him in. He wants to erase those horrible seconds where he thought he’d lost him forever and replace them with quiet moments like these. 

Leonard curls his palms over the back of Clint’s hands, mouth curving into a smile against his own. 

“I thought that was my line, you big buffoon,” Leonard teases, and Clint has never been so happy to be mocked in his entire life. 

Something worth living for, Kate had told him. Find something worth living for. It felt like an eternity ago. Clint smiles and strokes his fingers through Leonard’s hair, stealing another warm kiss. Leonard melts into him like putty, open and trusting and happy as Clint has ever seen him. He wants this moment to last for the rest of time and space.

Something worth living for indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [deforestkelleys!](http://deforestkelleys.tumblr.com)


End file.
